In a bad time for magazines, The Baffler returns

The Baffler, the magazine that punctured business cant and confronted the morally dubious aspects of the New Economy at a time when many publications and pundits were turning a blind eye (or were complicit in the bubble-inflation), is returning -- perhaps to say, "We told you so."

Thomas Frank, who started the magazine-cum-journal in 1988, last put out an issue in 2007. Before that, there had been a four-year hiatus. Frank's work for the Baffler led to the acclaimed, much-debated book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and he's currently a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Frank recently told The New York Observer that he suspected there might be a fresh receptivity to the Baffler's take on things: "We developed this critique of consumer culture and business culture, and lo and behold, a lot of the things that we were saying, instead of being this out-there stuff from the fringes of self-publishing land -- it's stuff that I think will make sense to everybody nowadays," he said. "The world has come a lot closer to our way of seeing things. It's funny how obvious it is now!"

According to the Observer, writers whom Mr. Frank has recruited include the Hermenaut founder (and former Brainiac author) Joshua Glenn, the n+1 editor Mark Greif, the BookForum editor Chris Lehmann, and the University of Illinois at Chicago literature professor Walter Benn Michaels, author of "The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Forget Inequality."

The Baffler used to have a notoriously loose publication calendar, with publication deadlines serving as rough targets. Frank says the editorial team has committed to a regular, twice-a-year schedule.

(Image via The New York Observer)